01 visual strategy guide

_Re-branding for HIGH TIMES magazine _01. Visual Strategy Guide

_Re-branding for HIGH TIMES magazine _01. Visual Strategy Guide

First published 2016 Š2016 Weifeng (Sent) Kong Designed by Weifeng (Sent) Kong www.forthechronic.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permisssion of HIGH TIMES magazine.

Bh

Brand history

02

Nb

New brand concept

10

Co

Competitors

Fa

Future audience

18

26

02

the old high times HIGH TIMES is the definitive resource for all things cannabis. From cultivation and legalization, to entertainment and culture, to hard-hitting news exposing the War on Drugs, HIGH TIMES has been the preeminent source for cannabis information since 1974.

The first HIGH TIMES magazine cover, 1974

Fueling the cannabis movement is a series of HIGH TIMES-sponsored events. These include our highly attended Cannabis Cup trade shows celebrating the champions of cannabis and our new Business Summit conference to break down barriers and connect everyone from entrepreneurs Our publication has featured original and advocates to health care providers works from some of the great names in and policymakers. counterculture and literature including Truman Capote, Hunter S.Thompson, HIGH TIMES is much more than Charles Bukowski and William magazine. Today, HIGH TIMES tranBurroughs, to name a few. That history scends the print, digital and physical of excellence continues to this day with worlds through magazines, websites, a focus on exposing the truth, present- apps and live events. We are jouring the public with the latest informa- nalists, enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, tion and research findings, and advo- music lovers, foodies, tech geeks cating for a legal and safe cannabis and much more. But above all, we are industry. committed to connecting people with the most relevant and timely informaHIGH TIMES has continued to evolve tion to inform their worldview and help to become as much of a cultural desti- them take a serious look at the health nation as a respected news outlet. Our benefits, business opportunities and unyielding coverage of the cannabis rich culture of cannabis. lifestyle has helped define one of the most prolific and enduring subcultures in modern American society. Music, arts, entertainment, live events and food now all have a seat at the table in the cannabis movement.

03

04

what is marijuana?

What makes marijuana so desirable is that it naturally produces a multitude of diverse chemical compounds calle “phyto-cannabinoids.” When consumed, these cannabinoids produce a variety of wide-ranging effects on the human mind and body by activatiing and stimulating our body’s internal cannabinoid receptors. All humans and animals naturally possess these “end-cannabinoids” receptors. This complex cannabinoid system is the very reason cannabis has been consumed for both recreational and medicinal purposes by ancient cultures and modern societies alike.

The most well-known cannabinoid is called delta 9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).

It is the psychoactive chemical that produces the desirable “high” or “stoned” feeling when consumed.

The other primary cannabinoid is known as cannabidiol (CBD). It has been found to be an effective treatment for a wide range of health conditions and thanks to modern scientific research, we’ve finally been able to quantify and prove these health benefits.

Figuratively, marijuana is earth’s greatest gift to mankind. Physically, marijuana is a natural body and mind–altering treat. Literally, marijuana is the budding flower of the female cannabis plant.

05

what are strains?

But you don’t need to be an expert to understand that all strains fall into one of three main categories: (1) sativa, (2) indica, or (3) hybrid.

Sativa and indica strains are the two main naturally occurring species, and hybrid strains are a mix of the two.

As new hybrid strains are developed they are crossbred with other existing strains, giving growers endless opportunities to experiment and prodece the next great strain. No matter if a strain is a natural variety or a hybrid, each will have very specific qualities and unique psychoactive effect.

As more and more strains become available, it can seem overwhelming to figure out which ones are best to procure and enjoy. You obviously can’t rely on all the crazy and unusual names given to these strains, so what do you do? For starters, it’s best to begin by narrowing down your choice to the variety type.

A marijuana strain is simply a particular variety of the cannabis plant. Not so simple is the breeding process and genetic makeup within each strain.

Lucky for us all there are master growers, creative breeders, and other amazing minds hard at work behind the scenes hunting for, cloning, and creating all the super strains that are availabl to all of us today.

Sativas are known for being a “daytime” strain because they provide you with an uplifting and energetic head high.

Indicas on the other hand are a better “nighttime” strain and will get your body stoned, making you feel relaxed, mellow, or even sleepy.

Hybrids provide a combination of effects that depend on the strains’ lineage—their parents. Typically these hybrids are either indica or sativa dominant, meaning they will express the charactaeristics of the dominant variety with less characteristics of the secondary variety. An indica-dominanat hybrid might give you a strong body buzz without feeling tired, or a sativa-dominant hybrid may make you very sociable and cheerful but still calm and relaxed. Other times, a hybrid can be a “true” hybrid, meaning that it is an even mix of both varieties.

06

time line part 1 A

A

B

Summer 1974, HIGH TIMES introduces Trans-High Market Quotations, an international price list for marijuana, in its inaugural issue.

C

B

D

E

F

September 1976, HIGH TIMES is the first magazine to put Bob Marley on its cover. He is on the cover a second time in February 1990.

G

07

H

C

I

J

June 1986, The Pot 40, a list dedicated to the best things in life as voted on by HIGH TIMES readers, is introduced.

D

Summer 1987, The HIGH TIMES Freedom Fighters are founded, staging major legalization events across the US. The Boston Freedom Rally draws crowds of over 100,000.

08

time line part 2 A

E

B

November 1987, The first-ever HIGH TIMES Cannabis Cup hands out awards for marijuana.

C

F

D

E

F

1990, HIGH TIMES releases Let Freedom Ring, a documentary about the Freedom Fighters starring Willie Nelson.

G

09

H

G

I

I

J

1997, HIGH TIMES launches 420.com

H

2007, The first Miss High Times pageant is held in Negril, Jamaica.

2013, HIGH TIMES and two other publications ask a judge to prevent enactment of a law requiring stores to place pot-themed magazines behind the counter if they allow patrons under 21. Marijuana is not pornography.

J

2014, The now-annual Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam has multiplied Stateside; High Times hosts Cannabis Cup in LA, Denver, San Francisco, Michigan and Seattle.

Nb

New brand concept

12

who we are Brand description HIGH TIMES is always telling the truth about health benefits of cannabis. Medical uses of marijuana would be better to serve a new generation of customers and stay true to one of the HIGH TIMES brand souls—recreation. There are lots of smoking products can be offered by HIGH TIMES brand, and featuring medical experience for insomnia, loss of appetite, stress, pain relief, depression, and headache. Based on the natural facts of marijuana, HIGH TIMES brand could partner with tobacco companies, rolling paper brands, recipe books, and medical consultants, or even science studies. The original audience may not change a lot, but will increase audience who would accept the proper use of marijuana.

13

our evolution Rebranding objective After 42 years of development, HIGH TIMES has walked through a lot of successes in marijuana legalization. By the year of 2016, the HIGH TIMES brand is fading out of people's mind. "I haven't seen that magazine maybe like 15 years ago!" Elric said, the sales manager of Grass Roots.

So we decided to give it a shot, rebranding HIGH TIMES as health care outfit for adults and middle age people in the United States.

We hoped to remain the soul of HIGH TIMES, which is marijuana can make life better.

To channel that soul, we aimed on medical use aspects, and we hope to extend the brand through education, science, and experience.

HIGH TIMES magazine dedicates to provide informed reports of the health benefits of cannabis plants through news, culture, entertainment, law, medical advances and cultivation. But in the past 2 decades HIGH TIMES magazine wasn’t able to present the right contents and has lost many audience.

Brand soul Cannabis plants could make life better through education and advocacy.

Mission statement Making medical cannabis more accessable and provide informed reports through science researches and cannabis education.

14

then HIGHT TIMES has tried to educate people about the benefits of cannabis plants in the past, and the brand has also given a feeling of hippie.

HIGH TIMES

15

16

now We are going to remain the educaitonal part for the brand and try to make the brand focus more on medical care aspect, with the feeling of healthy.

HIGH TIMES

17

Co

Competitors

20

current competitors As marijuana becomes a hot topic in the modern society, lots of company/ business try to educate people about the proper ways of using cannabis. Most of the companies want to share cannabis information through medical advances, politic news, economic trends and cannabis science.

Such as: Dope magazine 420 magazine CannabisNow magazine Cannabis Culture magazine Marijuana Venture magaizne 420 Times Canna magazine THC magazine THCbiz Skunk magazine

21

Creating cannabis awareness to the masses.

Focus on North America’s cannabis cultivation and recreational use of cannabis.

Focus on political news, entertainment and the proper use of cannabis.

Focus on trendy subjects that connects to cannabis, more towards to pop culture.

Focus on the most relevant news, political happenings, economic trends, social change and cannabis legislation.

Provides journalism and news delivery about cannabis-related politic, activism, growing information and entertainment.

Focus on helping business owners operate efficiently, profitably and in full compliance with state regulations.

Most focus on cannabis science, legalization and political trends in the U.S.

Broad range about cannabis from history to politics, from medical use to lifestyle entertainments.

Focus on cannabis industry trade publication, business directory, company news, business articles and cannabis related cultivation.

22

adjacent competitors This category mainly focus on people who want to use recreational cannabis, high quality cannabis and purchasing cannabis.

Such as: Kush magazine Northwest Leaf Oregon Leaf Alaska Leaf NUG magazine Cronic magazine Vegas Cannabis Big Bud magazine Weed World magazine

23

Recreational cannabis social media focus on entertainment, culture, and conferences.

Focus on cannabis appreciation with entertainment, lifestyle, sex and cultivation.

Focus on lifestyle, cultivation, news, videos and science articles about cannabis.

Most like a social media, online platform for news, science, growing advisory and online shop for cannabis.

Mainly focus on lifestyle entertainments, news and photography featured along within the magazine.

Focus on trendy culture and digital platform of cannabis trading, cultivation and a bit of cannabis science.

Northwest Leaf includes Oregon Leaf and Alaska Leaf. The NW Leaf focus on providing resources of medical marijuana within the Northwest America and Canada.

Focus on the cannabis from Oregon State. Similar to Alaska Leaf with entertainment, lifestyle and culture.

Focus on the natural and rare cannabis cultivation from Alaska and also contains cannabis entertainment, lifestyle and culture.

24

aspirational competitors Once the rebranding for HIGH TIMES is finished, there will still be challenges for the brand because HIGH TIMES is always providing resources and researches for audience. So HIGH TIMES will face about the science, lifestyle, politics and law aspects of cannabis.

Such as: KIVA Whoopi & Maya Elixirs GNC Fort Point Beer Co. The Body Shop Cannabis Beauty Defined Nutiva Navitas Naturals Oregon Olive Mill olive oil

25

Fa

Future audience

29

Evan Roma The fine artist, 32 Santa Cruz, CA 80k/year

Traits Before Evan graduated he was famous of his abstract paintings in the university.

After he worked as a fine artist for several years, he found out that there are lots of abstract artists publishing nice artworks and Evan felt himself a bit out of date. He wants to be more creative and desire to look for inspiration.

- Evan likes to take a shot of whisky before painting because he thought that would be more relaxing while working.

- Evan likes to smoke cigarettes because he feels relax during or after work.

- Evan likes to study botanical plants because that's where he got most of his painting inspiration from.

- Evan enjoys shopping food with his family because he likes to explore different ingredients.

- Evan always expecting to discover a higher level of color using in his artworks since he figured out a new style.

- Evan wanted to try marijuana but he afraids it will damage his brain.

- Evan also interested in science arts because he got a lot of inspiration from those abstract factors.

31

JOey martin Music bar performer, 28 New York City, NY 36k/year

Traits Joey needs to perform in 3 different bars at nighttime in a week. Since 2 month ago he doesn’t sleep well after the music performence and most of the daytime he felt tired working at the coffe shop. He has tried some sleeping medicines but that doesn’t help a lot because he still wakes up before the dawn.

- Music is an important parts of Joey’s life since at the age of 10 and he wanted to make more original music.

- Joey doesn’t eat enough because he smoked too much cigarettes and it made him loss appetite.

- He pays attention on sleeping pills while shopping because he would compare the benefits from different sleep medicines.

- Joey always seeking inspiration to compose new music but he doesn't has enough time to travel because of the working schedule. So he needs to find a way that can stimulates his imagination.

- Joey always getting late for dinner and sometimes he had dinner very late because of his working schedule.

- When he cannot sleep at night, Joey like to have energy drink and make him stay awake because he doesn't want to waste the time to compose new songs.

- Joey had friends who introduced him to medical marijuana because they wanted to help Joey on insomnia.

33

alice mann Photojournalist, 38 Los Angeles, CA 150k/year

Traits She usually traveled with few friends because she loves to share and talk. She’s such an ADHD kidault and this is the reason why she can’t focus more on her photo works recently. Her photography used to relate on spiritual, nature and calm emotion. She now wants to be totally calm down before she shoot a photo.

- Alice likes to travel to peaceful places because she think that can make her calm down and keep on shooting.

- Alice enjoys alcohol because she feels energetic and active, but she’s afraid of being drunk.

- Recently she felt a bit stressful and has insomnia because she’s a mother of 3 toddlers, she felt tired and wants to relax, like a vacation.

- As a photojournalist, Alice has to travel across all over the world. Every time when she back home Alice has to spend couple days to deal with jet lag and she really want to have quality sleeps.

- Alice wanted to focus more on her photograhpy exhibition, which is coming up couple weeks later. But she cannot concentrate because of her two adorable children Kenneth and Amber.

- Alice sometimes need to take pills because she wants to calm down and stay away from ADHD while thinking of a better idea to photograph.

- Alice likes to meditation because that helps her on spiritual photography.

35

dane bitter Professional skateboarder, 29 Philadelphia, PN 80k/year

Traits At the age of 29, Dane has won several X-games champion in the past decade.

But being a professional skateboarder must worked harder to achieve success and he has had injury on his knee.

Sometimes he feels the pain from the knee while he’s skating.

- Dane has tried some pain relief ointments and medicines for his knee pain since the injury from one year ago and it still feel painful especially while he’s skating.

- He likes to drink beer and probably it is one of the reasons that caused his left knee feel painful.

- Dane loves to try different foods from different culture because skateboarding has given an opportunity for traveling to other countries and he could try out many options from the local restaurants.

- As a professional skateboarder, Dane needs to stay with some local friends while traveling to another country. That caused him insomnia most of the time because he has hard time to get use to the sleeping condition.

- He used to try marijuana but he doesn't like it because he doesn't know how to choose the right landraces.

- Dane is sort of afraid of marijuana because it affected his performance one time when he was 25.

37

steve jameson Biology student, 26 Birmingham, MI 24k/year

Traits Currently Steve is going to graduate and his final essay put him into a depression. He worked hard on the researches and the part-time job as an assistant in a research studio. Depression just made him felt tired and not sociable. He needs a cheer up.

- Steve likes to study insects and bugs because it is interesting and he is obsessed with those beautiful creatures.

- Steve really wants to relax and enjoy some light music after studies and work because those pressures made him panic.

- Steve used to smoke marijuana because he heard it would help to relief anxiety, but he needs to study more about medical marijuana.

- He likes to have drinks with friends at the weekend because that pulls him out of depression shortly.

- Steve also interested in natural science because he likes to surprise himself from the chemistry of the nature.

- Recently Steve has shown interests in medical cannabis plants because he found out that the structures of cannabis are very new and attractive.

- Steve is not a sociable person and he always want to make more friends from other majors because of his part-time job took over most of his time.

39

michael oscar Businessman, 42 San Francisco, CA 200k/year

Traits Michael is such a workaholic. He wakes up early and always try his best to finish certain amount of works. When he feels tired he likes to drink coffee, which caused him skipped a lunch or a dinner once every two days. He knows caffeine would become additive and wants to change this routine.

- Michael enjoys hanging out with family at the weekend because that’s his only time to relax from working.

- He’s trying to find ways to avoid too much caffeine because he doesn’t wants to skip meals and become addicted to coffee.

- Michael usually don’t sleep good at Sunday night because he cares about his business and feels a bit anxiety.

- He smokes cigarettes sometimes because it provides 10 minutes break from work.

- He does 10K jogging 3-4 times a week but smoking cigarettes also makes him hard to breathe after jogging.

- Michael switched to electronic cigarette couple months ago because he wants to quit smoking cigarettes.

- He likes to brownies and coffee as his breakfast because he thinks that will make him stay energetic while working.

41

vanessa smith The vegan mom, 35 Memphis, TN 120k/year

Traits Vanessa is an outgoing mother who would share a lot about her life. She managed her time very good and always energetic. She likes casual lifestyle and also showing her interests in fashion.

- Vanessa likes to prepare health meals because she likes cooking and always taking good care of her family.

- She likes googling recipes because she wants to try different style of cooking and different spices.

- She’s a paper less person since became a vegan and she doesn’t like wasting, so she barely buy magazines from grocery stores.

- Vanessa loves minimal style fashion because she thinks the style looks good on her and matches her vegan soul.

- Vanessa doesn't like to smoke and tried to avoid her husband from smoking inside their house because she's a protective mother of her children.

- She usually goes cycling with her neighbors on the weekends because that helps her to stay fresh and keeps a good relationship with her friends.

- Vanessa will handmade sweaters for her children because she likes to explore different fabrics to improve her fashion aesthetic.

The name in grey color considered as the audience outside of the brand or who don't really need the brand.

43

tim colin Professional fitness coach, 30 Chicago, IL 110k/year

Traits Helping people to train and build up body shape is what Tim most passionate about. He knows how to relax himself after coaching, and loves to hang out with friends in his spare time.

- He doesn’t like to smoke because he needs to stay healthy and keep himself in shape.

- He likes photography because he loves outdoor adventures.

- He likes architectures because a good environment for fitness is very important.

- As a fitness coach, Tim often feels tired after training with his clients. He has been using some pain relief ointments but those are not helpful.

- Tim likes to shop food because he always want to be healthy and recently he tried to be a vegetarian.

- Tim loves to go hiking with his friends on weekends because that's the time he felt most relaxing and gives his energy.

- He likes to watch finess videos online because he always got inspiration for his new training style.

The name in grey color considered as the audience outside of the brand or who don't really need the brand.

in the visual development we will reveal how is the new logo being settled down.

GR 604: Nature of Identity Instuctor: Hunter Wimmer Fall 2016 @Academy of Art University San Francisco, CA